These findings indicate that Threads engineers are exploring ad technology, but that doesn't mean Threads will debut ads anytime soon, as some suspect.
bold of you to assume that ads won’t just be disguised as regular posts (and therefore federate)
Edit: after reading the article I heavily suspect ads will federate. As is they are just specially marked posts so I see no reason to think they won’t federate.
My instance is defederated from threads. At the time I mildly disagreed with that decision. Federated ads would vindicate that decision. I don’t need threads content that badly.
Yes and this was my reasoning for saying it would be fine to federate. But I’ll point out that federating ads would mean using my server’s infrastructure to serve ads on behalf of someone else. That would cost the admin more money and would require more user donations to keep it going. So just being able to block isn’t the necessary solution. Not sure that was even your point but I wanted to bring it up.
But I’ll point out that federating ads would mean using my server’s infrastructure to serve ads on behalf of someone else.
Marvel Comics could make an account on any Mastodon server and make posts to promote an upcoming movie. That’s a regular post, containing promotional material. What makes it an ad (or a sponsored post) in IG/Threads terms is to push such posts to users via targeting algorithms who didn’t subscribe to Marvel Comics. Threads cannot do that via ActivityPub, so your Mastodon server cannot serve Threads ads.
bold of you to assume that ads won’t just be disguised as regular posts (and therefore federate)
Edit: after reading the article I heavily suspect ads will federate. As is they are just specially marked posts so I see no reason to think they won’t federate.
My instance is defederated from threads. At the time I mildly disagreed with that decision. Federated ads would vindicate that decision. I don’t need threads content that badly.
You can block entire servers yourself. No need for an instance to defederate.
Yes and this was my reasoning for saying it would be fine to federate. But I’ll point out that federating ads would mean using my server’s infrastructure to serve ads on behalf of someone else. That would cost the admin more money and would require more user donations to keep it going. So just being able to block isn’t the necessary solution. Not sure that was even your point but I wanted to bring it up.
Marvel Comics could make an account on any Mastodon server and make posts to promote an upcoming movie. That’s a regular post, containing promotional material. What makes it an ad (or a sponsored post) in IG/Threads terms is to push such posts to users via targeting algorithms who didn’t subscribe to Marvel Comics. Threads cannot do that via ActivityPub, so your Mastodon server cannot serve Threads ads.